I will be spending Christmas alone and my children do not care

[Brazien]

Hello,

I have 3 adult children, my eldest DD is 31, she is married and has a gorgeous little boy who is 11 months old. They spent last Christmas with me and DD already made it clear they would be doing one Christmas with us and another with her husbands family which is obviously totally fine and understandable. My next child is my DS who is 27 and then my youngest DS who is 25.

I would say I generally have a very positive relationship with all of my children, we talk relatively frequently and haven’t until now had a large falling out, they haven’t ever raised any issues with me in terms of our relationship and have historically initiated and planned visits. I am divorced and have been for many years, I have no close relatives as both of my parents have passed away and my only brother lives in Australia.

I absolutely love hosting Christmas, it is the highlight of my year. When my children’s father and I divorced we actually agreed he would get Boxing Day and New Years Eve (our children were still small when I got divorced) in exchange for me getting Christmas as it matters so much to me. I have hosted Christmas every year since I got married at 23, I never complain about hosting or resent doing this, like I said it’s the highlight of my year. As my children have grown it has of course meant some years I’ve had all of them home and others just one but never have they left me alone for Christmas and I’d actually say they have instead made quite a bit of effort between themselves to ensure someone is always around to spend Christmas with me.

Tonight I was added to a group text message chat, it included myself, both of my DS and their respective partners. DS1 has been with his girlfriend for about a year and a half, DS2 has been with his boyfriend for a year. My eldest son then sent a message, I’ll paraphrase but it effectively said that due to my attitude and opinions in regards to his girlfriend he will not be spending Christmas with me this year as he would like to spend it with her and refuses to expose her to my “inflammatory” opinions. He said he his brother and their partners have all booked to go skiing/snowboarding instead. They then all left the group message chat before I was able to reply.

First of all, this is not a way in which my son would ever normally speak to me, it was very defensive and accusatory in tone. Second of all, the opinions he is referring to are from a conversation I had with him following a large family get together for Easter. She is 24, French and seems to have an extremely elevated ego and level of confidence that borders on arrogance. I know she has a poor relationship with her own father (her mother has passed) but he none the less funds her life which consists entirely of expensive pastimes (snowboarding, tennis, concerts) and seemingly getting drunk, using drugs and partying.

At Easter she mentioned politics, which isn’t something I’d be keen to talk about over a family meal normally but my DS said that if we can’t have a friendly debate then we seal ourselves into an echo chamber of our own beliefs. She was totally unwilling to hear me out, and kept citing her multilingual abilities, degree and “travels” as reason she clearly knew much better than I, about politics, in Britain, a country she has only lived in for about 2 years. I shut the conversation down and said this is clearly unproductive. I then told my son afterwards that I had found her attitude to be filled with arrogance. She has also blank out refused to attend my nephews wedding as it was in a church and my DD told me that soon after she gave birth she said to her “if you ever want to play tennis or go to Pilates I will go with you; I’m sure you’re dying to shed the baby weight”. DD found this quite upsetting at the time but DS refused to call her out for it.

In terms of Christmas, both of my DS had said they would be spending this year with me, DS1 did not spend last year with me but DS2 did. I was looking forward to this and despite my dislikes of his girlfriend’s attitude, I made it clear she was also invited, as was DS2s boyfriend.

I called DS1 after the message in the group message chat and explained that I had never meant to cause offence to his girlfriend or to him for that matter and only ever shared opinions as she has always seemed so keen to be forthcoming with her own. I told him that I would be spending Christmas alone and I found that very upsetting and asked him to reconsider, I also offered to cover any costs associated with rescheduling their trip. He told me quite plainly it is not his problem that I would be alone and that he felt like I did not approve of his girlfriend and would never approve of him dating someone “intelligent, gorgeous and cultured” as it would make me “insecure”. Again this is never a way he has spoken to me before. He then hung up.

I then called DS2 who said that he was sorry I would be alone but he feels they’ve given me enough time to make other arrangements and that he feels that his brother is right that I clearly don’t like his girlfriend and he wants to show a stand of support to his brother and his girlfriend who he said he thinks is brilliant. He claimed I only don’t like her as she doesn’t conform to my expectations of a polite “basic” girl who just wants to get married and go on family holidays every year.

While I would say I don’t massively like her, I’m an adult and totally capable of being perfectly civil towards her. More so the reasons I don’t like her have nothing to do with her beliefs but her sheer arrogance, ego and reckless lifestyle, funded entirely by her father.

AIBU to be quite upset by this and to believe this is most likely coming from his girlfriend? How should I approach this going forward?

I was talking about the son’s negative opinions of his girlfriend that he himself had expressed when they were split up.

Why on earth didn’t YOU keep your gob shut in the first place??! Don’t put the blame on your son for a situation that originated with you slating his girlfriend! You seem to have very little ability to reflect on the consequences of your own actions OP.

Are you prepared to be the bigger person and apologise for how you described her, @Brazien? Because it sounds like you might lose both your sons over this if your DS1 does propose to her. At things stand it sounds doubtful you'd even be invited to the wedding.

She shouldn’t apologise. The silly boy should learn not to run to tell his gf what mummy has said about her to him in private. While they were broken up no less.

OPs has learn the hard way to not give her opinions about her children’s partners under any circumstances (even if solicited). But her son behaved like a child and then vindictively put the blame on his mum and punished her on realising his girlfriend was understandably upset by his mum’s comments.

That wasn't agreeing with you at all. That was him saying you don't really know her and are misinterpreting her. Plenty of MNers hate their partners saying 'it'll be one drink' and then going AWOL for hours, and your son did it repeatedly. That isn't intense or hard work. It is basic respect. She clearly held a boundary there but after a couple of week's space, they chose to get back together.

You then also continued to complain about her with increasing vitriol to your other two children. You wanted to interfere and now don't like it that they have pushed back.

The more you post, the more I understand why this has happened and the less convinced I become that you will ever resolve it, as you seem to have zero self-awareness.

It's not unreasonable to be upset, and it's not unreasonable to be narrowing your eyes at La Girlfriend and suspecting that your DS1's new manners are a lot to do with her.

There is NOTHING you can do about it. Do not even try. Any efforts you make to reason or to change anybody's mind about anything will make this situation worse.

Distract yourself by finding an exciting, self-indulgent way to have Christmas to yourself this year. Or even, a not self-indulgent way - given your skills and love of the season, I'd say you'd be a massive asset to any local charities that are looking for manpower nearer the time. But either way, though I know it's going to be a wrench, if you're not to be alone and miserable and heartbroken start making better plans now.

I spoke to my DD this morning, not to encroach on her Christmas plans but just to discuss what had happened. I believe she must have spoken to her brothers as DS1 messaged me not very long ago saying
“Can I just clarify xxx isn’t upset because of the conversations at Easter, she enjoyed the debate and liked hearing your perspective. She is upset because you told me, DS2 and DD that she was arrogant, self indulgent, reckless and had an inflated sense of self”.
While I probably shouldn’t have said those things about her out loud, why on earth would he run and tell her if he was trying to keep peace!

Did you reply to the above message OP? If so, what did you say?

I think your DSs’ way of telling you they won’t be coming for Xmas, and exiting the group chat was very unpleasant. But I suspect there’s more than one side to this story.

I think you should make other plans for Xmas this year and look forward to your DD spending the following year’s Xmas with you.

If he told GF about this conversation it was to ingratiate himself with the GF. why would he feel the need to throw his mother under the bus? Is it an act of sacrifice to appease a narcissist?

She said this stuff while her son was on a break with his gf. OP was unwise but her comments were understandable in that context.

It’s not like OP has told the gf the negative stuff her son said about his gf during that period either - he’s broken OP’s trust by sharing those comments with his gf. If he felt OP had overstepped, he should have discussed with OP directly but left his gf out of it.

I agree with you.

All of the people saying that it’s the son’s fault for passing on information, the crux of it is that OP should not have said what she said to her son. If you don’t want the fact that you have been shitty about someone to be circulated, don’t be shitty. It’s that simple.

Is that not a fairly basic life lesson that we teach our children? Don’t talk behind someone’s back because it generally bites you on the arse somehow. In this case, it’s a Christmas alone.

The ones he’s clearly seen already then? The ones that don’t outweigh the positive ones he has about her?

He vented to his mother about his issues when angry/upset/frustrated. He then claimed down, went and resolved his issues with her, like adults in relationships tend to do. That they were able to navigate their interpersonal conflict and move forwards together likely deepened and strengthened their relationship tbh. We can all pick fault with our partners/spouses, that’s just a normal part of life and having relationships.

Well reckless is undeniable with drug taking, self indulgent so what…so you’ve said she’s arrogant …hardly the harshest criticism

Plenty of people get back together before breaking up for good.

A very personal character assassination of his girlfriend, even when broken up, is hard to recover from. You didn't worry they weren't suitable for each other, you said she was awful (basically). You're lambasting his ability to choose a nice person as a partner and revealing yourself to be very judgemental when you say those things. He didn't necessarily go running to tell her what you said, you don't actually know how it came to light. I do think it's a very unfair position to put your son in where he holds information that could be damaging to his relationship if he reveals it and is therefore left with keeping a secret about what his mum thinks of her (which can also be damaging) or saying what happened. Obviously he holds some responsibility for sharing hurtful information with her, but as I said, an unfair position to put him in imo.

Your lack of accountability is troubling. You've thrown this grenade (your opinion) out into the family and are then shocked that your children didn't prevent it exploding for you. Guard your own mouth! Words you've said may get passed on so be judicious with what you voice.

I don't think she sounds so bad really; she's young, free, passionate, educated and liberal. You don't sound bad either. You said bad things about her when they were broken up; you didn't mean her to hear them but she did so I would apologise to her directly. But for this Christmas let them go skiing and book something for yourself and hope this blows over or they break up.

I have to say it’s a bit rubbish of your DS to have told his GF what you said when commiserating with him after a break up. Just for the sake of moving forward, do you think she would take an apology dressed as you were just trying to make him feel better?

Try to leave your DD out of it, it feels like an attempt to garner sympathy and manipulate a Christmas invite whether that’s the intention or not.

Mental note to zip it next time they break up 😁

Or the girlfriend knew full well his mother didn’t like her, and he was honest with her when she asked if there was a problem.

There’s no need to cast the girlfriend in the role of narcissistic witch that’s cast a spell over the helpless sons. If we want to frame it as a good versus evil battle though, perhaps the girlfriend is the hero saving them from the overbearing (narcissistic?) matriarch they wanted an excuse to break away from.

We inly have the OP'S word for this young woman - thecOP dislikes her and we're getting a totally one-sided account of all these events and the young woman's character.

I remember after splitting up with my then DH (permanently), my mother told me she thought he was a "mummy's boy" (he was 39 at his point). Nothing could have been further from the truth.

My brother (28) and I (31) would never dream of leaving our mum alone for Christmas. Even if she was with family or friends, we would make sure one of us was there too. We alternate Christmas now with our partners families. Last year mum was going to be on her own and I simply asked my MIL if my mum could come, she was welcomed with open arms. Do you have a nice relationship with your daughters in laws, that wouldn’t mind hosting you on Xmas day too? Definitely speak to your daughter about it, if you have that kind of relationship.

Many people spend Christmas Day alone and not because they can't keep their opinions to themselves.

Volunteer during the season of goodwill.

It wasn't in private though, was it? It was recruiting her daughter and attempting to recruit her other son into slagging her off too.

And it also wasn't just when they were broken up as PP have said - it was after the Easter event.

If nothing else, it's monumentally stupid to slag off someone to a wider group who could all independently let the GF know, let alone directly to the woman's current partner.

It's also a horrible way to behave to your son, comprehensively slagging off their partner, to their face, with an audience.

I'm baffled how posters see it as a girlfriend issue, when the OP has behaved badly to her own son.

Sure, and plenty of people get back together and remain together for years. If he’s planning on proposing then he obviously wants to build a life with her, and that may very well end up being what happens. If so, the rift between OP and her sons could end up becoming permanent if she doesn’t at least try and resolve it now. Encouraging her to see the girlfriend as a malicious opponent that must be vanquished helps no one, least of all OP.

With kindness OP, I think your DS’ have a valid point. It does sound like you’ve made it very obvious you dislike the GF (even if she is all the things you said) and if you want to keep a good relationship with your DS you’re going to have to put the work in on rebuilding those bridges.

It’s difficult but as the saying goes, roots to grow, wings to fly. We have to let our children live their own lives and make their own choices. Sometimes we won’t agree with them but it’s our job to unconditionally love and support them. And to also be there without judgement if it all goes tits up for them!

I think Christmas is a write off this year. If I were you I’d book a lovely holiday somewhere and use that time to reflect. Hopefully your DS and GF will do the same and the new year will be an opportunity for forgiveness.

Discussions on politics are completely banned at any of our family get togethers or me and my darling brother would come to blows every time and ruin everyone’s day. I think this may be the way forward for your family as long as she’s the GF!

Yep, apologise, make a fresh start, look for the good in her - that’s what I said in my original post that you decided to take objection to.